Wireless Carrier Tries to Make Cellphone Bill Fun

Swedish customers of cellphone carrier 3 have access to a new app that is trying to make fun out of a typically un-fun experience — the monthly bill.

The Android and iPhone app, created with design firm Fjord, offers a bunch of different visualizations, including a look at data use by time, and which contacts are gobbling up the most of your minutes.

“With My 3, we wanted to do something completely new to help our customers really understand their mobile phone usage,” 3 Sweden VP Johan Gertell said in a statement. “By partnering with Fjord, we have created a beautiful, innovative way to give our customers access to their data and show our commitment to transparency.”

Showing customers how they use their data is a particularly important task for carriers as they aim to shift from unlimited plans to those that require customers to manage a pool of megabytes or gigabytes.

Just as the atom bomb was the weapon that was supposed to render war obsolete, the Internet seems like capitalism’s ultimate feat of self-destructive genius, an economic doomsday device rendering it impossible for anyone to ever make a profit off anything again. It’s especially hopeless for those whose work is easily digitized and accessed free of charge.

— Author Tim Kreider on not getting paid for one’s work

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